*I received this book for free from the publisher or author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*

A Cry From The Deep by Diana Stevan

A story of a love so powerful, it spans several lifetimes. Is it fate that we meet the right one? How do we know? And when we die, is it over?

When Catherine Fitzgerald, an underwater photographer, buys an antique Claddagh ring, she is troubled by nightmares that set her on a path to fulfill a promise of love made centuries before. As she unravels the mystery of the woman who haunts her dreams, she has to come to grips with her own struggle to find true love. Will it be her ex, a psychiatrist, who still loves her, or the handsome but unavailable marine archaeologist on the dive team?

Set in Provence, Manhattan, and Ireland, this romantic mystery exposes not only two women’s longings, but also the beauty of the deep, where buried treasures tempt salvagers to break the law.

My Review: 3 1/2 stars out of 5

The south of France’s Provence region, New York City, and Ireland’s beautiful Donegal Bay are some of my favorite places on earth. So when I realized they were the settings for Diana Stevan’s debut novel, A Cry from the Deep, I was excited to receive a review copy.

A CRY FROM THE DEEP is Diana Stevan’s debut novel. Writing fiction took a back seat while Diana worked as a clinical social worker, professional actress and writer-broadcaster for CBC Television’s Sports Journal in Vancouver, British Columbia, but the dabbling didn’t. Along the way, she wrote three screenplays, another novel, short stories, poetry, a stage play and some children’s books. She’s published articles in newspapers and poetry in a United Kingdom journal. She is currently working on her grandmother’s story, set in Czarist Russia during World War I. Diana Stevan lives with her husband, Robert on Vancouver Island, in beautiful British Columbia.

Margaret is a young woman in late nineteenth century Ireland praying that her sailor lover James returns before she needs to wed another man. When his boat is spotted, she joyously prepares for their wedding and joins him on his ship, the ill-fated Alice O’Meary. In our time, Catherine is a young underwater photographer and mother attempting to recover from the traumatic dive that destroyed both her career and her marriage. When she’s lured away from her lavender farm in the south of France by the chance to document the hunt for a historically significant treasure-laden shipwreck off the Irish coast, she joins the unethical treasure hunter Kurt Henessy and handsome nautical archeologist Daniel Costello. Returning to New York with her young daughter Alex, Catherine’s flea-market purchase of an old gold ring unites the two women from across the centuries as Catherine begins to experience Margaret’s story.

Some of the first romance novels I read—Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Daphne du Maurier—had a slightly removed quality, as if they were reporting on feelings or events instead of experiencing them. Diana Stevan’s debut novel reminds me of them. Of course, writing from different point of views is hard enough. Integrating those alternating POVs across centuries is especially daunting. Dialog and action have to be believable, and characters need a voice that’s individual and memorable enough to immediately identify them for readers. If the main characters’ voices in A Cry From The Deep had been more individual, or displayed more diversity in terms of dialog and personality, it would have been easier to overcome that feeling of distance and connect with them.

For me, this book was three separate stories that didn’t fully integrate. First there was a ghost story, where the connection with Margaret was intriguing, but only hinted at the reasons behind it. Were Catherine and Daniel resurrected versions of the earlier lovers? If not, what did Margaret want them to do? Next, the treasure hunt with pirate-like Henessey was interesting but somewhat repetitive when it came to the dives. Finally, the love triangle with Daniel and ex-husband Richard took the form of Catherine’s internal speculation. For the book to be successful in any of its triple incarnations, I would have liked to see the pivotal Big Moment, where blood, bodies, or at least sex is overwhelming and life changing.

Stevan’s command of grammar and structure is impressive, and her technical descriptions of the dive process were interesting. But her descriptions of the locations I love were bare bones. I felt that the story could have happened anywhere without any particular impact. Because it was well-written, a strong attempt, and an interesting premise, I would give A Cry From The Deep three and a half stars. I think Stevans is a talented writer and this is an impressive debut. I’d love to see another book from her, especially if she lets her characters take some risks.